Business Technology Forum Mining the MLS for GOLD

Jeremy Crawford Chief Operations Officer

MLSListings Inc

Which Listing Syndication Service(s) does MLSListings offer and what percentage of subscribers elect to have their listings syndicated?

• MLSListings provides brokers with a custom syndication control center for many destinations such as trulia.com, homefinder.com, realtor.com, and www.mlslistings.com. MLSListings also provides graphical statistics to the brokers and agents for listings, photos, and profiles viewed by consumers on www.mlslistings.com. All brokers actively use the BCC.

• MLSListings offers Point2 by Yardi Systems. 55% of listings and 35% of broker offices are opted-in to Point2

• MLSListings offers ListHub by Move, Inc. 35% of listings and 17% of broker offices are opted-in to ListHub

Is MLSListings participating in FNMA’s Short Sale Assistance desk and has it helped your subscribers close transactions?

• MLSListings was the first MLS in California in partnership with the California Association of REALTORS® to offer the FNMA Short Sale Assistance Desk (SSAD) for MLSListings subscribers with MLS data integration in May of 2011

• Fannie Mae has changed the SSAD program over to “HomePathForShortSales” as of March 2013 where anyone can publically access and escalate short sale issues directly with Fannie Mae, removing this from being a product only for MLS based subscribers. MLSListings still links to the new public portal inside of the MLS system for subscriber convenience

• Fannie Mae does not provide MLSListings with subscriber use statistics therefore we are unable to gauge the level of effectiveness of the SSAD and the new public program

What client portal does MLSListings offer (within your MLS System and/or as an add-on service) and what percentage of subscribers are active users of the portal

• MLSListings offers the CoreLogic Matrix MLS Client Portal as a subscriber benefit. 50% of subscribers participate with an average of 5-6 active clients per subscriber for roughly 50,000 auto-alerts going out per day

• MLSListings offers the ListingBook client portal with the base version as a subscriber benefit and enhancements for an upgrade fee. Roughly 3,500 subscribers use the base version with only 100 utilizing the enhanced options

• MLSListings offers a client portal included with the custom branded website product for a discounted fee in partnership with IHomeFinder. Approximately 225 subscribers use this product offering

Does MLSListings create and/or curate real estate collateral that subscribers can repurpose to their clients?

• MLSListings provides REsource powered by RISMedia. Fresh, relevant, and ready-to-go real estate articles and videos for subscriber websites, blogs, and social media outlets

• MLSListings creates exclusive market statistics in house which subscribers can publish on their own websites, blogs, and social media outlets and are available to the public as well here: http://www.mlslistings.com/NewsRoom/market-data-reports

• MLSListings provides Housing Trends eNewsletter, a free monthly real estate market update which can be shared across websites, email, and social media outlets to subscriber’s clients

What types of social media tools does MLSListings offer?

• MLSListings provides agents and consumers the option to share listings from www.mlslistings.com directly to Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest

• MLSListings provides agents and consumers the option to share listings directly from MLSSource to Facebook, while also providing branding as a subscriber benefit to all subscribers

• MLSListings custom IDX website offering, for a fee, includes a Facebook search tool for subscriber Facebook pages. Subscribers will soon be able to purchase just the Facebook search widget outside of the IDX Website offering

• MLSListings utilizes corporate social network pages for marketing and communication to all subscribers on a regular basis

Many MLSs have multiple reciprocal access agreements and third party service offerings integrated within their MLS, how do you approach subscriber awareness and training of these services?

• MLSListings provides a subscriber portal and dashboard which allows the subscriber to see and use all of the available integrated reciprocal access options through SSO technologies for convenience. In addition, MLSListings provides a storefront within the subscriber portal for subscribers to learn about and add additional third party service offerings to their current subscription

• MLSListings has an extensive Public Strategies group who handle marketing, communication, training, and outreach program for all products and services including reciprocal access and third party service offerings who partner with MLSListings – The marketing and communication aspects of the program includes association and subscriber newsletters, press

releases on local and national levels, webinars, email notifications, social media updates, speaking engagements at tour meetings, broker office meetings, trade shows, and other related events, and customized daily messaging related to these products and services located inside of the subscriber portal

– The training and outreach aspects of the program includes onsite training at the MLS, local Associations and Broker offices; hosted webinars for training and third party service promotion; a full subscriber informational portal for training and technical support material with online tutorials including videos; and a customer support team geared towards promoting and assisting the subscriber in the use of the products and services on a daily basis

Do you see a technology solution to the challenges presented by the current tight inventory ?

• Denoting that not one technology solution can solve the inventory challenges, MLSListings provides business policy and technical solutions as options in helping the subscribers deal with the current tight inventory

– MLSListings has partnered with C.A.R. to provide MLS-Connect in May 2013 to aid the subscribers in filling out offers quickly by auto-populating ZipForms with MLS data

– MLSListings offers real-time property alerts to consumers of just listed properties to ensure consumers will have the opportunity to see as much inventory as possible through the client portal.

– www.mlslistings.com and MLSSource, the agent and consumer mobile platform, display listings within 5 minutes of entry by a subscriber for immediate exposure

– MLSListings policies allow the display of “pending” listings on www.mlslistings.com, MLSSource Mobile, and IDX based sites for consumers to have visibility and access to make backup offers on pending listings in a tight market.

– New Home Source product offering was launched in December of 2012 which provides subscribers access into builder inventories outside of the MLS allowing subscribers to find properties for consumers outside of the MLS inventory

– MLSListings compliance department ensures listings are entered within a timely manner into the MLS by enforcing listing R&Rs and referring any professional standards and/or ethnical issues in offer review to the local Associations for enforcement

Which 1-2 tools does MLSListings provide that subscribers could be using more to increase their listings? • CoreLogic Realist Tax and Matrix MLS Search

– Subscribers can use Realist to increase their listings by searching for listings which are distressed and contacting the underlying owners for potential listing agreements

– Subscribers can use Matrix to search for listings which are expired and/or cancelled without being relisted and contact the underlying owners for potential listing agreements to relist those properties and use property history to win the business

• New Home Source – Through New Home Source, Subscribers can search through builder inventories for

potential listings and matching those listings with current buyers

• Build Your Online Presence Tools

– MLSListings offers an extensive array of products and services to help subscribers build out their brand and presence online to capture leads and listings. This includes custom branded websites, mobile solutions, and Facebook options. In addition, MLSListings offers SEO enhanced subscriber profile pages including custom videos allowing subscribers to enhance their business online to gain new clients on www.mlslistings.com

What advice would you give to a new MLS member on how to best utilize the MLS to build/grow their business

• Take full advantage of the entire suite of products which the MLS makes available. In today’s typical MLS environment, 20% of subscribers use 80% of the MLS product offerings, while 80% of the subscribers use less than 20% of the MLS product offerings. There is a direct correlation between maximizing the use of all MLS offered products and services and maximizing subscriber production

• Fully Leverage MLS Training and Support programs to help tailor the products and services a subscriber needs. MLSListings provides product suites, recommendations, and specialized training for subscribers based upon their specific business needs, such as “My Mobile Office”, “Market My Listing”, “Market My Business”, “Manage My Transactions”, and “Track My Clients”

• Mobile: MLSListings iPad class instructing subscribers on how to use MLSSource and conduct business on the iPad is the most attended and desired class this year. Subscribers continue to ask for more features and functions for mobile devices

• Big Data: Cross Integration of product offerings and underlying data sets such as linking web based information into mobile platforms and providing combined data sets and analytics across products such as integrating MLS data in the tax system and consumer contact and search data from the client portal into the mobile product offering. In addition, continue to expand data along with listings such as neighborhood and school information, crime data, demographics, etc.

• Enhanced Client Portal: Subscribers continually request enhancements to the client portal. A common feature request is expanding subscriber to client communication built in to the existing client portal with features such as messaging between agents and clients and allowing clients to edit portal searches while reporting the details back to the subscriber

• Pre-Packaged Statistics for local markets: Infographics that can be pasted into

client communications, websites, etc., especially requested by new subscribers

What tool(s) are MLSListings’ subscribers most asking for?

What is the best technology tool MLSListings has introduced to subscribers in the past year?

• MLSSource broker, agent, and consumer mobile solutions

• New version of Realist Tax System with MLS data integration and a free Automated Valuation Tool for IDX websites powered by combining MLS and Tax information

• CloudCMA, BuildFax, and New Home Source partner products

• A new SalesForce integrated online ecommerce system with paperless billing, third party product integration, and Single-Sign-On. Online enrollment options coming with the next major release in 2013

• Matrix 6.1

What MLS technology issue would MLSListings like to resolve in the next 6 months?

• MLSListings would like to provided a common aggregated data feed to brokers and vendors for all of the listings in the greater Northern California area. Today MLSListings aggregates data from multiple MLSs in Northern California into one common database for agent access. Expanding the permissions to allow brokers and vendors to receive the common aggregated data will reduce broker costs and vendor product implementation time. This would also provide the consumers with a more consistent view for listings across multiple MLSs

• MLSListings is currently working to provide brokers an API for bulk listing upload from broker back office systems into the MLS. This would remove the need for agents to enter listings into multiple locations, decrease time to market, allow brokers the ability to send listings to the MLS that are from out of area agents, and keep the broker back office system listings more in-sync with the MLS

• Ideally, MLSListings would like to expand the use of the in-house developed Listing Management application and make the product available to multiple MLSs to allow agents the convenience of adding a listing directly to the centralized common aggregated database for immediate exposure to multiple MLS subscribers